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SPEECH 



OF 



WILLIAM H. SEWAED, 



DELIVERED AT ROCHESTER, 



MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1858. 



Fet.low-Citizexs : The unmistakable out- 
break.s of zeal which occur all around me, show 
that you are earnest men — and such a man am 
I. Let us therefore, at least for a time, pass 
by all secondary and collateral questions, 
>vhether of a personal or of a general nature, 
and consider the main subject of the present 
canvass. The Democratic party — or, to speak 
more accurately — the party which wears that 
attractive name, is in possession of the Federal 
Government. The Republicans propose to dis- 
lodge that .party, and dismiss it from its high 
trust. 

The main subject, then, is, whether the Demo- 
cratic party deserves to retain the confidence 
of the American People. In attempting to 
prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actu- 
ated by prejudices against that party, or by pre- 
possessions in favor of its adversary 5 for I have 
learned, by some experience, that virtue and 
patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all 
parties, and that they differ less in their mo- 
tives than in the policies thev pursue. 

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in 
full operation, two radically different political 
systems ; the one resting on the basis of servile 
or slave labor, the other on the basis of vol- 
SHitary labor of freemen. 

The laborers who are enslaved are all ne- 
groes, or persons more or less purely of Afri- 
can derivation. But this is only accidental. 
The principle of the system is, "that labor in 
every society, by whomsoever performed, is 
necessarily unintellectual, grovelling, and base ; 
and that the laborer, equally for his own good 
and for the welfare of the State, ought to be en- 
slaved. The white laboring man, whether na- 
tive or foreigner, is not enslaved, only because 
he cannot, as yet, be reduced to bondage. 



You need not be told now that the slave sys- 
tem is the older of the two, and that once it wa.* 
universal. 

The emancipation of our own ancestors, Cau- 
casians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates 
beyond a period of five hundred years. The great 
melioration of human society which modern 
times exhibit, is mainly due to the incomplete 
substitution of the system of voluntary labor for 
the old one of servile labor, which has already 
taken place. This African slave system is one 
which, in its origin and in its growth, has been al- 
together foi-eign from the habits of the races which 
colonized these States, and established civiliza- 
tion here. It was introduced on this new continent 
as an engine of conquest, and for the establish- 
ment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese 
and the Spaniards, and was rapidly extend- 
ed by them all over South America, Central 
America, Louisiana, and Mexico. Its legiti- 
mate fruits are seen in the poverty, imbecility, 
and anarchy, which now pervade all Portu 
guese and Spanish America. The free-labor 
system is of German extraction, and it was 
established in our country by emigrants from 
Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain, and 
Ireland. 

We justly ascribe to its influences the strength, 
wealth, greatness, intelligence, and freedom, 
which the whole American people now enjoy. 
One of the chief elements of the value of human 
life is freedom in the pursuit of happiness. The 
slave system is not only intolerant, unjust, and 
inhuman, toward the laborer, whom, only be- 
cause he is a laborer, it loads down with chains 
and converts into merchandise, but is scarcely 
less severe upon the freeman, to whom, only be- 
cause he is a laborer from necessity, it denies fa- 
cilities for employment, and whom it expels from 



the community because it cannot enslave and con- 
vert him into merchandise also, it is necessarily 
improvident and ruinous, because, as a general 
truth, communities prosper and ilourish or droop 
and decline in just the degree that they practice 
or neglect to practice the primary duties ofjus- 
tice and humanity. The tree-labor system con- 
forms to the divine law of equality, which is 
written in the hearts and consciences of men, 
and therefore is always and everywhere benef- 
icent. 

The slave system is one of constant danger, 
distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It de- 
bases those whose toil alone can produce wealth 
and resources for defence, to the lowest degree 
of which human nature is capable, to guard 
against mutiny and insurrection, and thiis wastes 
energies which otherwise might be employed in 
national development and aggrandizement. 

The free-labor system educates all alike, and, 
by opening all the helds of industrial employ- 
ment, and all the depaiiments of authority, to 
the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes 
of men, at once secures universal contentment, 
and brings into the highest possible activity all 
the physical, moral, and social energies of the 
whole State. In States where the slave system 
prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly, se- 
cure all political power, and constitute a ruling 
aristocracy. In States where the free-labor 
system prevails, universal suffrage necessarily 
obtains, and the State inevitably becomes, soon- 
er or later, a republic or democracy. 

Russia yet maintains slavery, and is a despot- 
ism. Most of the other European States have 
abolished slavery, and adopted the system of 
free labor. It was the antagonistic political tend- 
encies of the two systems which the first Napo- 
leon was contemplating when he predicted that 
Europe would ultimately be either all Cossack 
or all Uepublican. Never did human sagacity 
utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems 
are at once perceived to be incongruous. But 
they are more than incongruous — they are incom- 
patible. They never have permanently existed 
together in one country, and they nuver can. 
It would be easy to demonstrate "this impossi- 
bility, from the irreconcilable contrast between 
their great principles and characteristics. But 
the experience of mankind has conclusively es- 
tablished it. Slavery, as I have already inti- 
mated, existed in every State in Europe. Free 
labor has supplanted it everywhere except in 
Russia and Turkey. State necessities, developed 
in modern times, are now obliging even those 
two nations to encourage and employ free labor; 
and already, despotic as they are, we find them 
engaged in abolishing slavery. In the United 
States, Slavery came into collision with free la- 
bor at the close of the last century, and fell be- 
fore it in New England, New York, New Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it efl'ect- 
ually, and excluded it, for a period yet undeter- 
mined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Geor- 
gia. Indeed, so iacompatible are tbo two sys- 



terns, that every new State which is organized 
within our ever-extending domain ma^kes its 
firs'- political acta choice of the one and an ex- 
clusion of the other, even at the cost of civil war 
if necessary. The slave States, without law at 
the last national election, successfuUv forbade 
within their own limits, even the castiiicr of votes 
for a candidate for President of the United 
States supposed to be favorable to the establish- 
ment of the free-labor system in new States. 

Hitherto, the two systems have existed indif- 
ferent States, but side by side witliin the Amer- 
ican Union. This has happened because the 
Union is a confederation of States. But in an- 
other aspect the United States constitute only 
one nation. Increase of population, which is 
filling the States out to their verv borders, to- 
gether with a new and extended net-work of 
railroads and other avenues, and an internal 
commerce which daily becomes more intimate, 
is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and 
more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus 
these antagonistic systems are continually 
coming into closer contact, and collision re- 
sults. 

Shall I tell you what this collision means ? 
They who think that it is accidental, unneces- 
sary, the work of interested or fanatical agita- 
tors, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case 
altogether. It is an irrepressible contlict be- 
tween opposing and enduring forces, and it 
means that the United States must and will, 
sooner or later, become either entirely a slavc- 
holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. 
Either the cotton and rice fields of South Caro- 
lina and the sugar plantations of Lotiisiaua will 
ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charles- 
ton and New Orleans become marts for legiti- 
matj merchandise alone, or else the rye fields 
and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New 
York must again be surrendered by their farm- 
ers to slave culture and to the productitm of 
slaves, and Boston and New York become once 
more markets for trade in the bodies aud souls 
of men. It is the fiiilure to apprehend this 
great truth that induces so many unsuccessful 
attempts at final compromise between the slave 
and free States, and it is the existence of this 
great iact that renders all such pretended com- 
promises, when made, vain and ephemeral. 
Startling as this saying may appear to you, fel- 
low-citizens, it is by no means an original or 
even a modern one. Our forefathers knew 
it to be true, and unanimously actecl upon it 
when they framed the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States. They regarded the existence of the 
servile system in so many of the States with 
sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, 
and they looked upon the collision between 
them, which was then just revealing itself, and 
which we are now accustomed to deplore, with 
favor and hope. They knew that either the one 
or the other system must exclusively pre^■all. 

Unlike too many of those who in modern 
time iavoke their aiUhority, they had a choice 



3 



between the two. They preferred the system of 
free labor, and they determined to organize the 
Government, and so to direct its activity, that 
that system should surely and certainly prevail. 
For this purpose, and no other, they based the 
whole structure of CTuverumeat broadly on the 
principle that all men are created equal, and 
iherei'ore free — little dreaming that, within the 
short period of one hundred years, their de- 
scendants would bear to be told by any orator, 
however popular, that the utterance of that 
principle was merely a rhetorical rhapsody ; or 
by any judge, however venerated, that it v.-as 
attended by mental reservations, which rendered 
it hypocritical and false. By the ordinance of 
1787 they dedicated all of the national domain 
not yet polluted by Slavery to free labor imme- 
diately, thenceforth and forever, while by the 
new Constitution and laws they invited foreign 
free labor from all lands under the sun, and in- 
terdicted the importation of African slave labor, 
at all times, in all places, and under all ciream- 
sta.nces whatsoever. It is true that they neces- 
sarily and wisely modified this policy of Free- 
dom, by leaving it to the several States, affect- 
ed as they were by differing circumstances, to 
abulish Slavery in their own way and at their 
own pleasure, instead of confiding that dutv to 
Congress, and that they secured to the slave 
States, while yet retaining the system of Slavery, 
a tlu'ee-dfths representation of slaves in the Fed- 
eral Government, until they should find them- 
' selves able to relinquish it with safety. But the 
very nature of these modifications fortifies my 
■ position that the fathers knew that the two sys- 
tems could not endure within the Union, arid 
expected that within a short period Slavery 
would disappear forever. Moreover, in order 
that these modifications might not altogether 
defeat their grand design of a Republic main- 
taining universal equality, they provided that 
two-thirds of the States might amend the Con- 
stitution. 

It remains to say on this point only one word, 
to guard against misapprehension. If these 
States are to again become universally slave- 
holding, I do not pretend to say with what vio- 
lations of the Constitution that end shall be ac- 
complished. On the other hand, while I do 
confidently believe and hope that my country 
will yet become a land of universal Freedom, I 
do not expect that it will be made so otherwise 
than through the actifin of tlie several States 
co-operating with the Federal (Jovernment, and 
all acting in strict conformity with their respect- 
ive Constitutions. 

The strife and contentions concerning Sla- 
very, which gently-disposed persons so haliitu- 
aliy deprecate, are nothing more than the ripeii^ 
ing of the conflict which the fathers themseh'es 
not only thus regarded with favor, but uliich 
they may be said to have instituted. 

it is not to be denied, however, that thus fai 
the course of that contest has not been accoril- 
ing 10 their humane uuticipatious and wishu^.' 



In the field of Federal politics. Slavery, deri- 
ving unlooked-for advantages from commercial 
changes, and energies unforeseen from the 
facilities of combination between members of 
the slaveholding class and between that class 
and other property classes, early rallied, and 
has at length made a stand, not merely to re- 
tain its original defensive position, but to extend 
its sway throughout the whole Unioii. It is 
certain that the slaveholding class of American 
citizens indulge this high ambition, and that 
they derive encouragement for it from the rapid 
and effective political successes which they have 
already obtained. The plan of operation is 
this : By continued appliances of patronage, and 
threats of disunion, liiey will keep a majority 
favorable to these designs in the Senate, where 
each State has an equal representation. Through 
that majority they will defeat, as they best can, 
the admission of free States, and secure the 
admission of slave States. Under the protec- 
tion of the Judiciary they will, on the principle 
of the Dred Scott case, carry Slavery into all 
the Territories of the United States, now existing 
and hereafter to be organized. By the action 
of the President and the Senate, using the 
treaty-making power, they will annex foreign 
slaveholding States. Inafavorable conjuncture 
they will induce Congress to repeal the act of 
1808, which prohibits the foreign slave trade, 
and so they will import from Africa, at the cost 
of only $20 a head, slaves enough to fill up the 
interior of the continent. Thus relatively in- 
creasing the number of slave States, they will 
allow no amendment to the Constitution preju- 
dicial to their interest; and so, having perma- 
nently established their power, they expect the 
Federal Judiciary to nullify all" State laws 
which shall interfere with internal or foreign 
commerce in slaves. When the free States 
shall be sufliciently demoralized to tolerate these 
designs, they reasonably conclude that Slavery 
will be accepted by those States themselves. I 
shall not stop to show how speedy or how com- 
plete would be the ruin which the accomplish- 
ment of these slaveholding schemes would 
bring upon the country. For one, I should not 
remain in the country to test the sad experi- 
ment. Having spent my manhood, though not 
my whole life, in a free State, no aristocracy of 
any kind, much less an aristocracy of slavehold- 
ers, shall ever make the laws of the land in 
which I shall be content to live. Having seen 
the society aroun<l me universally engaged in 
agriculture, manufactures, and trade, which 
were innocent and beneficent, I shall never be 
a denizen of a State where raeu and women are 
roared as cattle, and bought and sold as mer- 
chandise. When that evil day shall come, and 
all further effort at r..;sislance shall be unpossi- 
ble, then, if there shall be no better hope for 
i-;?demption than I can now foresee. I shall say 
■vith Fraiiklin, v.diile looking abroad over the 
whole earth for a ncv,'aii.d more congenial home, 
■' Where Liberty d'.vciiS; there is my country." 



You will tell me that these fears are extrava- 
gant and chimerical. I answer, they are so, 
but they are so only becau.se the designs of the 
slaveholders must and can be defeated. But it 
is only the possibility of defeat that renders 
them so. They cannot be defeated by iuastivi-. 
ty. There is no escape from them, compatible 
with non-resistance. How, then, and in what 
way, shall the necessai'y resistance be made? 
There is only one way. The Democratic party 
must be permanently dislodged from the Gov- 
ernment. The reason is. that the Democratic 
party is inextricably committed to the designs 
of the slavc4iolders, which I have described. 
Let me l>e well understood. I do not charge 
that the Democratic candidates for public oflice 
now before the people are pledged, much less 
that the Democratic masses who support them 
really adopt those atrocious and dangerous de- 
signs. Candidates may, and generally do, 
mean to act justly, wisely, and patriotically, 
when they shall be elected ; but they become 
the minisiers and servants, not the dictators, of 
the power which elects them. The policy 
which a party shall pursue at a future period 
is only gradually developed, depending on the 
occurrence of events never fully foreknown. 
The motives of men, whether acting as electors 
or in any other capacity, are generally pure. 
Nevertheless, it is not more true that " Hell is 
])aved with good intentions," than it is that 
(Mrth is covered with wrecks resulting from in- 
nocent and amiable motives. 

The very constitution of the Democratic party 
commits it to execute all the designs of the 
slaveholders, whatever they may be. It is not 
a party of the whole Union, of all the free States 
and of all the slave States ; nor yet is it a party 
of the free States in the North and in the North- 
west ; but it is a sectional and h)cal pai'ty, having 
jiracticully its seat within the slave States, and 
counting its constituency chiefly and almost ex- 
clusively there. Of all its representatives in Con- 
gress and in the Electoral Colleges, two-thirds 
unilbrmly come from these States. Its great 
clement of strength lies in the vote of the slave- 
holders, augmented by the representation of 
three-fifths of the slaves. Deprive the Demo- 
cratic party of this strength, and it would be a 
hel])less and hopeless minority, incapable of 
continued organization. The Democratic party, 
being thus local and sectional, acquires new 
fc'lrength from the admission of every new slave 
State, and loses relatively by the admission of 
every new fre(^ State into the Union. 

A party is in one sense a joint stock associa- 
tion, in which those who contribute most direct 
the action and management of the concern. 
The slaveholders contributing in an overwhelm- 
ing proportion to the cajiital strength of the 
Democratic party, they necessarily dictate and 
prescribe its policy. The inevitable caucus 
system enables them to do so with a show of 
fairness and justice. If it were possible to con- 
cbive for a moment that the Democratic party 



should disobey the behests of the slaveholders 
\\e should then see a withdrawal of the slave- 
holders, which would leave the party to perish. 
The portion of the party which is found in the 
free States is a mere appendage, convenient to 
modify its sectional character, without impair- 
ing its sectional constitution, and is less ett'ect- 
i\e in regulating its movement than the nebu- 
lous tail of the comet is in determining the ap- 
pointed though ap])arently eccentric course of 
the fiery sphere from which it emanates. 

To expect the Democratic party to resist Sla- 
very, and favor Freedom, is as unreasonable as 
to look for Protestant missionaries to the Cath- 
olic Propaganda of Rome. The history of the 
Democratic party commits it to the policy of 
Slavery. It has been the Democratic party, 
and no other agency, which has carried that pol- 
icy up to its present alarming culmination. 
Without stopping to ascertain, criticallv, the or- 
igin of the present Democratic partv, we may 
concede its claim to date from the era of good 
feeling which occurred under the Administra- 
tion of President ^lonroe. At that time in this 
State, and about that time in many others of 
the free States, the Democratic party deliberate- 
ly disfranchised the free colored or African cit- 
izen, and it has pertinaciously continued this 
disfranchisement ever since. This was an ef- 
fective aid to Slavery ; for while the slaveholder 
votes for his slaves against Freedom, the freed 
slave in the free States is prohibited from vo- 
ting- against Slavery. 

In 1824, the Democracy resisted the election 
of John Quincy Adams — himself before that 
timc! an acceptable Democrat — and in 1828 it 
expelled him fioin the Presidency, and put a 
slaveholder in his place, although the oflice had 
been filled by slaveholders thirtj'-two out of forty 
years. 

In 18of), Martin Van Buren — the first non- 
slaveholding citizen of a free State to whose 
election the Democratic party ever consented — 
signalized his inauguration into the Presidency 
by a gratuitous announcement, that under no 
circumstances would he ever approve a bill for 
tho abolition of Slavery in the District of Co- 
lumbia. From 1838 to 1844, the subject of 
abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia 
and in the national dock yards and arsenals was 
brought before Congress by repeated popular 
appeals. The Dcn'iocratic party thereupon 
promptly denied the right of petition, and ef- 
fectually suppressed the freedom of speech in 
Congress, so far as the institution of Slavery was 
concerned. 

From 1840 to 184."), good and wise nien cotin- 
selled that Texas should remain outside of the 
Union until she should consent to relinquish 
her self-instituted Slavery ; but the Democratic 
])arty precipitated her admission into the Un- 
ion, "not only without that condition, but even 
with a covenant that the State might be divided 
and reorganized so as to constitute four slave 
States, instead of one. 



In 1846, when the United States became in- 
volved in a war with Mexico, and it was appa- 
rent that the struggle would end in the dismem- 
berment of that Republic, which was a nou- 
slaveholding Power, the Democratic party re- 
jected a declaration that Slaver}' should not be 
established within the territory to be acquired. 
"When, in I80O, Governments were to be insti- 
tuted in the Territories of California and New 
Mexico, the fruits of that war, the Democratic 
party refused to admit New Mexico as a free 
State, and only consented to admit California 
as a free Slate on the condition, as it has since 
explained the transaction, of leaving all of New 
Mexico and Utah open to Slavery, to which was 
also added the concession of perpetual Slavery 
in the District of Columbia, and the passage of 
an unconstitutional, cruel, and humiliating law, 
for the recapture of fugitive slaves, with a fur- 
ther stipulation that the subject of Slavery should 
never again be agitated in either chamber of 
Congress. When, in 1854, the slaveholders 
were contentedly reposing on these great ad- 
vantages, then so recently won, the Democratic 
party unnecessarily, ofticiously, and with super- 
serviceable liberality, awaked them from their 
slumber, to offer and force on their acceptance 
the abrogation of the law which declared that 
neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude should i 
ever exist within that part of the ancient terri- 1 
tory of Louisiana which lay outside of the | 
State of Missouri, and north of the parallel of | 
.S6° 30^ of north latitude — a law which, with | 
the exception of one other, was the only statute j 
of Freedom then remaining in the federal code, i 

In 185(), when the people of Kansas had or- 1 
ganized a new State within the region thus ! 
abandoned to Slavery, and applied to be ad- | 
mitted as a free State"into the Union, the Dem- ! 
ocratic party contemptuously rejected their pe- 1 
tition, and drove them, with menaces and in- i 
timidations, from the Halls of Congress, and j 
armed the President with military power to en- ! 
force their submission to a slave code, estab- i 
lished over them by fraud and usurpation. At 
every subsequent stage of the long contest 
which has since raged in Kansas, the Democratic 
party has lent its sympathies, its aid, and all 
the powers of the Government which it con- 
trolled, to enforce Slavery upon that unwilling 
and injured people. And now, even at this 
day, while it mocks us with the assurance that 
Kansas is free, the Democratic partv keeps the 
State excluded from her just and proper place 
in the Union, under the hope that she may be 
draponed into th(; acceptance of Slavery. 

The Democratic party finally has procured 
from a Supreme Judiciary, fixed in its inter- 
est, a decree that Slavery exists by force of the 
Constitution in every Territory of the United 
States, paramount to all legislative authority 
either within the Territory or residing in Con- 
gress. 

Such is the Democratic party. It has no pol- 
icy, State or Federal, for tiuaace, or trade or 



manufacture, or commerce, or education, or in- 
ternal improvements, or for the protection or 
even the security of civil or religious liberty. 
It is positive and uncompromising in the inter- 
est of Slavery — negative, compromising, and 
vacillating, in regard to everything else. It 
boasts its love of equality, and wastes its strength 
and even its life in fortifying the only aristoc- 
racy known in the land. It professes fraterni- 
ty, and, so often as Slavery requires, allies 
itself with proscription. It magnifies itself for 
conquests in foreign lands, but it sends the na- 
tional eagle forth always with chains, and not 
the olive branch, in his fangs. 

This dark record shows you, fellow-citizens, 
what I was unwilling to announce at an earlier 
stage of this argument, that of the whole nefa- 
rious schedule of slaveholding designs which I 
have submitted to you, the Democratic party 
has left only one yet to be consummated — the 
abrogation of the law which forbids the African 
slave trade. 

Now, I know very well that the Democratic 
party has, at every stage of these proceedings, 
disavowed the motive and the policv of fortifv- 
ing and extending Slavery, and has excused 
them on entirely different and more plausible 
grounds. But the inconsistency and frivolity 
of these pleas prove still more conclusively the 
guilt I charge upon that party. It must indeed 
try to excuse such guilt before mankind, and 
even to the consciences of its own adherents. 
There is an instinctive abhorrence of Slavery, 
and an inborn and inhering love of Freedom, 
in the human heart, which render palliation of 
such gross misconduct indispensable. It dis- 
franchised the free African on the ground of a 
fear that, if left to enjoy the right of suffrage, he 
might seduce the free white citizen into amal- 
gamation with his wronged and despised race. 
The Democratic party condemned and deposed 
.lohn Quincy Adams because he expended 
$12,000,000 a vear, while it justifies his favored 
successor in spending $70,000,000, $80,000,000, 
and even $100,000,000, a year. It denies 
emancipation in the District of Columbia, even 
with compensation to masters and the consent 
of the people, on the ground of an implied 
constitutional inhibition, although the Consti- 
tuti(m expressly confers upon Congress sover- 
eign legislative power in that District, and al- 
though the Democratic partv is tenacious of 
the principle of strict construction. It violated 
the express provisions of the Constitution in 
suppressing petition and debate on the subject 
of Slavery, through fear of disturbance of the 
public harmony, although it claims that the 
electors have a right to instruct their Repre- 
sentatives, and even demand their resignation 
in cases of contumacy. It extended Slavery 
over Texas, and connived at the attempt to 
spread it across the Mexican territories, even 
to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, under a plea 
of enlarging the area of Freedom. It abrogated 
the Mexican ^luve law and the Mies'ouri Com- 



promise prohibition of Slavery in Kansas, not 
tu open the new Territories to Slavery, but to 
try therein the new and fuscinating theories of 
Non-intervention and Popular Sovereignty; and 
liually it overthrew both these new and elegant 
systems by the English Lecompton bill and the 
Dred Scott decision, on the ground that the 
free States ought not to enter the Union with- 
out a population equal to the representative 
basis of one member of Congress, although slave 
States might come in without inspection as to 
their numbers. 

Will any member of ttie Democratic party 
now here claim that the authorities chosen by 
the suffrages of the party transcended their 
partisan platforms, and so misrepresented the 
party in the various transactions I have recited ? 
Then I ask him to name one Democratic states- 
man or legislator, from Van Buren to Walker, who 
either timidly or cautiously like them, or bold- 
ly and defiantly like Douglas, ever refused to 
execute a behest of the slaveholders, and was 
not therefor, and for no other cause, immedi- 
ately denounced, and deposed from his trust, 
and repudiated by the Democratic party for 
that contumacy. 

I think, fellow-citizens, that I have shown 
you that it is high time for the friends of Free- 
dom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, 
aud that their very first duty is to dismiss the 
Democratic party from the administration of the 
Government. 

Why shall it not be done ? All agree that it 
ought to be done. What, then, shall prevent its 
being done ? Nothing but timidity or division 
of the opponents of the Democratic party. 

Some of these opponents start one objection, 
and some another. Let us notice these objec- 
tions briefly. One class say that they cannot 
trust the Republican party ; that it has not 
avowed its hostility to Slavery boldly enough, or 
its affection for Freedom earnestly enough. 

I ask, in reply, is there any other party which 
can be more safely trusted ? Every one knows 
that it is the Republican- party, or none, that 
shall displace the Democratic party. But I 
answer, further, that the character and fidelity 
of any party are determined, necessarily, not 
by its pledges, j)rogrammes, and platforms, but 
by the public exigencies, and the temper of the 
people when they call it into activity. Subser- 
viency to Slavery is a law written not only on 
the forehead of the Democratic party, but also 
in its very soul — so resistance to Slavery, and 
devotion to Freedom, the popular elements now 
actively working for the Republican party 
among the people, must and will be the re- 
rources for its ever-renewing strength and con- 
stant invigoration. 

Others cannot support the Republican party, be- 
cause it has not sufficiently exposed its platform^ 
and determined what it will do and what it will 
not do, when triumphant. It may prove too 
progressive for some, and too conservative for 
uthci-s. As if any party ever iurusaw sy cleiii-ly 



the course of future events as to plan a univer- 
sal scheme for future action, adapted to all pos- 
sible emergencies. Who would ever have join- 
ed even the V\'hig party of the Revolution, if it 
had been obliged to answer, in 1775, whether it 
would declare for Independence in 177(i, and 
for this noble Federal Constitution of ours in 
1787, and not a year earlier or later? 

The people of the United States will be as 
wise next year, and the year afterward, and 
even ten years hence, as we are now. Thev 
will oblige the Republican party to act as the 
public welfare and the interests of justice aud 
humanity shall require, through all the stages 
of its career, whether of trial or triumph. 

Others will uot venture an eliurt, because they 
fear that the Union would not endure the 
change. Will such objectors tell me how long 
a Constitution can bear a strain directly along 
the fibres of which it is composed ? This is a 
Constitution of Freedom. It is being converted 
into a Constitution of Slavery. It is a repub- 
lican Constitution. It is being made an 
aristocratic one. Others wish to wait until 
some collateral questions concerning temper- 
ance or the exercise of the elective franchise 
are properly settled. Let me ask all such per- 
sons, whether time enough has not been wasted 
on these points already, without gaining any 
other than this single advantage, namely, the 
discovery that only one thing can be effectually 
done at one time, and that the one thing which 
must and will be done at any one time is just 
that thing which is most urgent, and will no 
longer admit of postponement or delay. Final- 
ly, we are told by faint-hearted men that they 
despond : the Democratic party, they say, is un- 
conquerable, and the dominion of Slavery is 
consequently inevitable. I reply to them, that 
the complete and universal dominion of Slavery 
would be intolerable enough when it should 
have come after the last possible effort to escape 
should have been made. There would in that 
case be left to us the consoling reflection of 
fidelity to duty. 

But I reply, further, that I know — few, I think, 
know better than I — the resources and the en- 
ergies of the Democratic party, which is identi- 
cal with the Slave Power. I do ample prestige 
to its traditional popularity. I know, further — 
few, I think, know better than I — the difHculties 
and disadvantages of organizing a new political 
force like the Republican party, and the obsta- 
cles it must encounter in laboring without pres- 
tige and without patronage. But, notwithstand- 
ing all this, I know that the Democratic party 
must go down, and the Republican party must 
rise into its place. The Democratic party de- 
rived its strength originally from its adoption of 
the principles of equal and exact justice to all 
men. So long as it practiced this principle faith- 
fuUv, it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable 
when it renounced the principle, and since that 
time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of 
iUi own .Btryngtb, or eveti of its traditiouiil mer* 



its, but because there as j'ct had appeared in 
the political field no other party that had the 
conscience and the courage to take up and 
avow and practice the life-inspiring principle 
which the Democratic party had surrendered. 
At last, the Republican party had appeared. It 
avows now, as the Republican party of 1800 
did, in one word, its faith and its works, "Equal 
and exact justice to all men."' Even when it 
first entered the field, only half organized, it 
struck a blow which only ju«t failed to secure 
comj)lete and triumphant victory. In this, its 
second campaign, it has already won advanta- 
ges which render that triumph now both easy 
and certain. 

The secret of its assured success lies in that 
very characteristic which, in the mouth of scof- 
fers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility 
and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a 
party of one idea ; but that idea is a noble 
one — an idea that fills and expands all gener- 
ous souls ; the idea of equality — the equality of 



all men before human tribunals and human 
laws, as they all are equal before the Divine 
tribunal and Divine laws. 

I know, and you know, that a revolution has 
begun. I know, and all the world knows, that 
revolutions never go backward. Twenty Sena- 
tors and a hundred Representatives proclaim 
boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opin- 
ions and principles of Freedom which hardly so 
many men even in this free State dared to utter in 
their own homes twenty years ago. While the 
Government of the United States, under the con- 
duct of the Democratic party, has been all that 
time sui-rendering one plain and castle after 
another to Slavery, the people of the United 
States have been no less steadily and persever- 
ingly gathering together the forces with which 
to recover back again all the fields and all the 
castles which have been lost, and to confound 
and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the be- 
ti-avers of the Cojistitution and Freedom for- 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS. 
1858. 



JUN 5 \9\1 






